Products and services: 65 Max Apparel offers hip-hop clothing under its own name as well as several other manufacturers, including Cogie, LRG, Gino Green, Evisu, Artful Dodger, 10 Deep, Shawn John, Echo Ridge, South Pole and more. They also carry Naughty Shoes for women, accessories, chains, belts, New Era Caps and sunglasses.

Ronald Henderson also is a producer for young musicians throughout the Bay Area and 65 Max Apparel sells their albums and memorabilia. The bands include The Deadly Combination, Simba, Homeless Derilex, Young Smitt, Turbin, Turf Boyz, Little Mi, Lil Mika The Great, Jamez, Circle Mob, Ya, Shisty and Hatchett the First.

How did you get into the business? Ronald Henderson has always had a connection with the music industry. His father used to live with musician Sly Stone, and their family has friends who put up the money for Bobby Brown’s first album, so his dream has always been to become a music promoter.

After being laid off from his job a few years back, he decided to take the chance and make his dream come true. On one of his last days commuting home from work, he saw a sign that said “65 max — Stay Alive.” Since that had always been his motto, he decided to take a chance and began working on setting up his new business venture. In addition to working with several hip-hop bands, he became interested in designing clothing. After coming up with the designs and having them made, Henderson started an online clothing service.

“The only problem with that is that people want to touch the clothes — not just look at them — so we decided to open a location where people could come and check them out,” Henderson said.

It only made sense to bring in the other clothing distributors as well, he said.

Since most of his clothing is designed more for cold weather, bringing in other designers gave him a year-round business.

Best thing about the business: “Interaction with different ethnic backgrounds,” Ronald Henderson said.

He said that hip hop clothing crosses all boundaries. There are a lot of different people that come in the store.

“Sure, Latino and Caucasians spend the most money, but we don’t treat anyone different when they come into our store. Treating people right and making them feel good is what we are all about,” he said.

Worst part about the business: “Music is my passion,” Henderson said.

He said he can’t think of a thing he doesn’t like about the business, unless it’s that some people have a bad impression about what hip-hop clothing is all about. It isn’t all bad, but the whole idea of it just has such a bad reputation, he said.

Key to success: “So far we have all rave reviews and that is the biggest part of success,” Henderson said. “I’ll feel successful when one of my artists is picked up by on a major label and they are wearing my clothing on the cover.”

Biggest misperception about the business: Hip-hop clothing’s reputation is the biggest misperception, according to Henderson.

“Hip-hop clothing is related to urban struggles. It gets a bad name, being depicted as negative and, unfortunately, there is a lot going on and it’s hard to rectify people’s opinions,” he said.

Henderson said that although there is a lot of bad associated with the words hip-hop, there is also a lot of good. There is a lot of money in the industry these days, whether it is related to hip-hop music or clothing.

Henderson said that hip-hop clothing is one of the leading clothing designs right now and big-named clothing manufacturers are making millions off the clothing.

“Even the upper-crust people are wearing the products, so it can’t be all that bad,” he said.

Future plans: Henderson is working hard on a “Stop the Violence” campaign he hopes to kick off very soon. His idea is to keep kids off the streets by teaching them to write and make music.

He wants to help them work on portfolio packages to help get them noticed by big record labels. He also would like to work on the problem of helping people understand today’s youth.

“What they are wearing is not how they act,” he said. “We have to start somewhere, why not start here? We have to educate everyone about this problem — even our kids.”